


Overcome

by TheSkyandtheSun



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Shadow Pokemon, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24606739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSkyandtheSun/pseuds/TheSkyandtheSun
Summary: Thirty years ago, a young Lugia lost her parents. They disappeared, never to be seen again. A mysterious visitor to her new home may provide the answers to her questions...
Kudos: 4





	Overcome

Tundra the Lugia answered the call of her heart on a glimmering summer day. Named for the desolate landscape on which she was raised, instinct compelled her to migrate south as soon as her wings were strong enough. The young dragon gaped at the intensity of the sunlight, no longer obscured by heavy clouds and the all-encompassing green. Pidgey sang. Pokémon she had never seen before ambled among the brush and scuttled in the trees. Awed, the newcomer made a home for herself in a secluded cave just below the surface of the water, far from the beaches. 

Though grateful for the bounty of food, Tundra began to feel out of place in such a bright, overgrown land. Her blue and white feathers stood out like a sore thumb against black rocks, tan sand, and turquoise waters. Tundra knew from her parents’ stories that she had made it to where all Lugia eventually went to finish growing up and discover their purpose in life. It was called Teaching Place. Other Pokémon had different names for it. Tundra didn’t know them or particularly care. Tundra had never been interested in names. She was not sure what she was interested in apart from humans. Oh, yes. Tundra had plenty of reasons to be interested in humans. 

When rarely a human or group of humans wandered close to the beach, they found themselves swiftly teleported underground before being carefully dissected. Once or twice, Tundra held a brief conversation with her victims before getting on with dissecting. She found them frustratingly uninformative. Stupid creatures never said anything useful. They simply babbled or pleaded for their lives. 

So, when she caught a human and his Umbreon slinking through the forest, she didn’t bother with conversation. Her keen eyes caught sight of them while flying overhead. She bore down on them like a hawk. Tundra dragged the human by his belt and the Umbreon by its tail out of the trees and under the waves. Flung them onto the flattest part of the cave. Kept them pinned in place with telekinesis.

As she prepared clay tablets to record her observations, the Umbreon snarled. Its cries were incoherent and so savage she began to feel uneasy after a moment of listening. She rolled the soft grey clay into flat slabs half the size of her feet. As she stamped the date into the first slab, she realized the Umbreon was gone. 

A weight struck her squarely in the head. Tundra yelped in surprise and dropped the tablet. The Umbreon’s claws dug into the soft tissue of her face. She opened her beak wide, hoping to bite down on the pesky creature. 

“Yaaaaa!” Pain exploded in her throat.

She fell backward, choking. It felt as if razor blades were forcing their way down her gullet. She tried to grab whatever it was telekinetically to no avail. There was nothing solid to grab. 

The cave wavered and dissolved into a blur. Her head pounded. No! She couldn’t faint now. Not in front of a human. Who knows what he’d do to her? 

With one mighty cough, a ball of dark energy shot out of her beak. It blasted a small hole in the cave floor. Tundra shuddered, realizing what would have happened if it had remained in her body. The Umbreon, barely visible in the cave’s shadows, sidled up to the hole and smirked. She barely had time to consider this before becoming aware of the pressure on her back.

Tundra whipped her head around. The human was sitting between her plates, panting. She blinked stupidly at him until she realized the pressure had been the result of his jumping up and down. A memory flashed through her mind: of choking on poorly-chewed seaweed as a chick. Her mother patted her back with one wing to help dislodge the mass.

The human might have just saved her life. 

Why? She wondered. No human had ever done anything kind for her family. 

Before she could demand an explanation, he pulled something out of a pocket. It was small, flat, and square. She couldn’t tell what it was in the dim light.   
As if on cue, the Umbreon’s markings lit up. They were purple instead of the usual yellow, though Tundra had no idea of their normal coloration. She gasped. 

The photo the human held depicted two familiar Lugia alongside a smiling man in a lab coat. Enough background was visible that she knew they were at her family’s summer home: flat plains with a little marsh in the distance.

It had been almost thirty years since she had a glimpse of her parents.

The human removed his hat. She guessed the mesh covering his face was for keeping bugs out. Humans could be very clever. Tundra didn’t have enough experience to know if this was the same human in the photo, but the way he pointed to himself and then to the photo suggested he was. 

“Thorne,” he said. “You probably don’t remember me. You were only this big when I saw you last. I knew your parents.” He held his hands shoulder-width apart.

Tundra didn’t understand his words, but the images in his mind were strong. Images of her parents as she remembered them, of a strange building in the summer home and a baby Lugia covered in downy feathers. 

Me, she realized. He met me when I was a chick.

“Do you know where they are?” she demanded.

He simply stared at her. The Umbreon giggled. 

“Do you talk or just make funny noises?” she snapped at it.

“Depends,” the Umbreon said. “On how the conversation is gonna go. Is there a way out that doesn’t involve swimming?” 

She hesitated. Lava tubes connected her cave to the surface. Already too large to venture up them herself and needing the fresh oxygen they supplied, she simply hoped that no fire Pokémon or curious spelunkers would come down them. The Umbreon was shifty and while the human’s behavior was promising, she still had no idea what they truly intended. She nodded. 

This seemed to put the Umbreon at ease. He folded his front paws and rested his chin on them. After a moment, he said, “my boss and I have been looking for you for a long time, sweetie. We had no idea where to start after your parents left their summer home. We assumed they took you with them. When we headed up north and heard about a lone young Lugia, we didn’t put two and two together right away.”

“W-wait,” her words had never failed her before. Anger bubbled in her chest. She could feel the human Thorne slide off her back. As he went to join the Umbreon, she asked, “how do you even know my parents?”

Thorne said something to the Umbreon. The Pokémon scratched behind his ear, then answered, “I don’t. My boss met them while he was doing research on the marsh environment. He somehow got across to them that he wasn’t a threat and wanted to learn if they were willing to teach. They became good friends. He was there when you hatched.”

Tundra gaped at the human. Tears welled up as she lowered her face to Thorne’s. “You’ve been looking for me all this time?”

Cautiously, Thorne laid his gloved hands on her nose. He stroked her while she cried. 

For several moments, they stayed in that awkward configuration. The tears slowed and she blinked the remaining ones away.   
“Well, not exactly,” the Umbreon continued. “Boss still had duties. He couldn’t quit his job to start a search he had no idea how to begin. He talked to your parents almost every day for the better part of a year. Then he went back home for the winter. When he came back, you and your parents were gone.”

He stopped. Tundra searched her memory. “We only go there for summer. I don’t remember staying for so long. Mother and father didn’t want us to go back for a while. They said there were lots of humans and it wasn’t safe anymore. Then, one day, they left me with my uncle and went to check on the summer home. They never returned.”

The Umbreon considered that for a moment. He nodded at Thorne, who produced more photos. Tundra didn’t know what to make of them. There were shots of humans in identical outfits. They appeared to be posing. Most of the photos were headshots. 

“Over the years,” the Umbreon said. “Some group called Cipher kept contacting Boss, asking for information about Lugia. After he published his paper mentioning his encounters with your family, he got a lot of questions. Most were from curious trainers. Cipher’s questions never seemed suspicious, but they were persistent. The company sent some pretty important people to ask about your family in person.” 

Tundra cut him off to ask what a company was and why did Thorne have so many pictures of the Cipher people. The Umbreon balked at the first, muttering it was something humans made when they got together in groups with rules. Reluctantly, Tundra let him continue his story.

“Humans tend to mind their own business,” the Umbreon explained. “The Cipher people’s behavior was weird enough that Boss didn’t trust them. He started asking questions. Dangerous questions. Long story short, he found out they were doing some pretty shady stuff with professors’ research. Especially his research.” The   
Umbreon’s face went rigid. He paused. “Cipher was doing experiments on Pokémon. I’m one of those.”

Tundra blinked. “You’re a what?”

“I’m a Shadow Pokémon,” he said. “Third generation. My grandparents were normal Eevee. They went through a process that changed them. They had kits who were also Shadow Pokémon. Then, those kits grew up and had me.”

“What does this have to do with my parents?” Tundra’s belly grew hot again. 

“Does your uncle have kids?”

The question caught her by surprise. “N-no.” 

“Did you ever meet any other Lugia your age?”

She shook her head. What was he getting at?

Face still blank as if reciting something he had heard, the Umbreon said, “Cipher’s main research goal as of 2020 is the production of Shadow Pokémon purebred lines. The drug department successfully created a version of XD serum that induces permanent, heritable change. In the next decade, it is the CEO’s hope to have specialized breeds out for sale in Orre markets.”

“What does that mean?” Tundra asked.

“It means your parents were the only Lugia reproducing. Cipher wants Shadow parents who can produce Shadow children.”

Tundra closed her eyes, sighing. “Arceus, I feel like my brain will explode. I think I understand what you’re saying. These Cipher people want my parents to have more children. Children who are weird and powerful like you.”

The Umbreon smiled an unpleasant smile. It made her stomach churn.

“So what?” Tundra asked, the heat spreading to her chest. “Where are they? Are they okay? Why can’t you tell me anything useful?”

Thorne was putting the photos away. The Umbreon rested his chin on his paws once again. “Because, sweetie, we’re not here to answer your questions. We want you to answer ours.” He glanced at the diagrams and neat rows of skeletons at the back of the cave. “You’ve done a great job so far.”

He flicked one ear in Thorne’s direction. On cue, the human pulled a vial from his belt and threw it. The glass shattered, releasing a mauve haze into the air.

Treachery! The Lugia’s vision clouded red.

Roaring, Tundra charged them. Thorne ducked under her legs. It occurred to her that if she moved, she could pin him in place with her feet. He dodged. 

A barrage of powerful attacks struck her sides. She heard her own choked gasp as the wind left her lungs in one great rush.

She staggered back. The sound of feet running towards the back of the cave rang in her head.

Shuddering, Tundra glared around for her tormentor. She could barely see anything through the mauve haze. Except the Umbreon’s red eyes glowing like beacons. 

“This is fun,” he rasped. 

“Not for long,” she hissed. “Traitor.”

“Traitor?” he laughed. “Hardly. If anything, I’m helping you. You know who to blame for your parents’ disappearance now. If what Boss suspects about you is true, you’ll need every scrap of information you can get on Cipher.”

“I’m sick of your riddles!” Tundra fired up a Hyper Beam. Small and agile though he was, there was no way the Shadow whatever-he-was could dodge an explosion of pure energy.

“Whoa,” he whispered. His glowing eyes remained in place.

Tundra grinned. She almost crowed her triumph, but the light from her own Hyper Beam shocked her. It was a vivid shade of violet.   
The Hyper Beam was more of a cough than an attack. One the Umbreon dodged easily. He perched on a ledge above her head. “Easy, now.” His voice was gentle.

Tundra gaped at him, then doubled over in agony. She watched through blurred vision as her snow-pure wings darkened until they were almost black. The feathers on her belly paled to soft grey. She could feel the muscles in her face stretching, brow ridges extending into long, jagged points. Each gasp of air brought more involuntary shifts. All the while, the heat boiled over from her belly to her blood. 

Absurdly, Tundra smiled. She had never felt so powerful. So ready for anything in her life. 

The truth of the Umbreon’s words weighed on her. At long last, she had a lead. As the last changes dyed her eyes a brilliant crimson, the Shadow Pokémon’s killing frenzy overcame her. She pictured all of the things she would do to the people who destroyed her family. The need to act on those desires consumed her.  
With a gleeful thrust of her wings, Tundra shot out towards an unsuspecting world. Her departure sent the remaining mauve smoke up the lava tubes, as well as drenched the entire cave.

Professor Thorne muttered something about how he hated being right. He glanced anxiously at his Umbreon. “Only a Shadow Pokémon can defeat another Shadow Pokémon. Let’s just hope it goes the way we planned.”


End file.
